


we will perish with love

by shilu_ette



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 03:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5231795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shilu_ette/pseuds/shilu_ette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>sequel and prequel pieces to 'but we do not know love.' Please read my other work before reading this. A death, chance meetings, and a farewell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a funeral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What does Nanjiroh’s legacy mean to you?” he says, and it is with a curious detachment now. Keigo hears the question, and is disgusted.
> 
> What does a legacy contain? The reporter would have liked Ryoma to cry and admit that it weighs onto him, the guilt that his father had not achieved anything in his lifetime, that he chose to be a doting father than a star; he could have been great but became normal instead.
> 
> Ryoma, of course, does none of those things. He gives the reporter a cold smile that falters even Keigo, and replies, “I was not aware he had a legacy.”

 

000

 

Keigo holds Ryoma’s hand. It is clammy and cold and Nanjiroh’s death is encrusted inside those bones. But Keigo holds it tight and vows he will not let go.

 

000

 

When did you first love the boy, Yuushi asked him.

 

 

That was a night of fog, which later cleared. He does not remember, perhaps because drinks had its free rein with him and he was tired from the ordeal he had gone through. Nanjiroh had not died with the dignity of a private individual nor the fanfare a loved celebrity—the reporters swarmed the gates, their hard eyes softened with a fake smile. _Our condolences_ , they first say, and they ask the questions. _Nanjiroh, did he ever regret his quiet retreat? Did he ever think what if? Did he ever_ —and they look at the son, the boy, a man in façade, and their voices die down: here is the son whose existence had marred Nanjiroh’s future: a future that could have made Japan great, whose abilities could have shaped Japan’s pride.  Their smiles grow shaper and the voices are softer now. _You must be Nanjiroh’s son_ , they say, with stunted breaths.

 

Sometimes, Keigo forgets how cold Ryoma can be. He has only seen the side of a Ryoma who scowls when Keigo flicks the brim of his cap, who is resigned to the coddles and teasing that Keigo bestows upon him, the smirk when he is playing tennis, the occasional laugh that comes after. He had seen a brief flash of annoyance that comes into his eyes when they fight. But he has not encountered his frigid composure.

 

For that was what Ryoma was: a fragile boy who buried his father and who must now hold his guard against the sharks. They are looking for old murk to dig up in the face of a dead man and care not for the dead soul.

 

 _I am_ , the boy says, and that is all he says. His eyes are hard and shine of gold, the light that comes from the fire within him.

It is winter. Ryoma is fragile under the bulk of a coat he had enwrapped himself upon, and now he leads the proceedings of his father, his head bowed, and the reporters click away, and one bold, stops Ryoma after the formal burial has ended.

“What does Nanjiroh’s legacy mean to you?” he says, and it is with a curious detachment now. Keigo hears the question, and is disgusted.

What does a legacy contain? The reporter would have liked Ryoma to cry and admit that it weighs onto him, the guilt that his father had not achieved anything in his lifetime, that he chose to be a doting father than a star; he could have been great but became normal instead.

Ryoma, of course, does none of those things. He gives the reporter a cold smile that falters even Keigo, and replies, “I was not aware he had a legacy.”

 

 

000

 

Later, they are alone.

 

“I want to burn the net,” Ryoma speaks. His voice is still edged with a coldness that is hard to fend off, but inside there exists tiredness as well.  An age-old tiredness that enwraps him, that cannot be fended off by sleep.

 

“The net?”

“The tennis net. By the…” Ryoma stops for a brief pause, but completes his words, “By the temple.”

“The neighbors will talk,” Keigo observes. The smoke would be clear on a cloudless night like this, and they might call the cops or the firefighters. They will smell the smoke in this quiet little neighborhood and wonder.

“Fuck the neighbors,” Ryoma snaps, with such vengeance, that Keigo stares at him for a moment. “They’ll talk whether we do shit or not.”

“If you say so,” Keigo says, after a brief silence, and helps him unhook the net and roll it into a neat bundle of hooks and strings. They work in silence and Keigo’s fingers grow red and raw from the cold, but he rolls his side of the net and does not complain. Ryoma does not lift his head during the task.

“Where should we put it?” Keigo finally asks, once they are done.

“Here,” Ryoma says. His voice had dropped into a mere whisper and sounds strangled. “In the middle of the court, here.” He drops his burden and Keigo does the same. They look at the neat bundle, and Keigo studies Ryoma: his dry eyes and lips, and how he is about to fall over, crumble beneath the earth.

“I have a brother, you know,” Ryoma says, suddenly, out of the blue, “Did you know?”

Keigo wonders what answer he should give, nor where this is leading them. “No,” he says, “I didn’t.”

“I thought he’d show up. Even though, I guess that was stupid.” Ryoma laughs and his breath comes out in a white steam. “He wouldn’t have known, would he?” The last words are directed more to himself than anything. Keigo keeps silent.

Ryoma shifts, and suddenly, he looks old. No, Keigo amends, that’s not right. Keigo remembers a twelve-year-old Ryoma Echizen who had been stunted by the Child God, a Echizen who had floundered for a minute before opening the heights of tennis. But, before he had reached the pinnacle, he had seen an abyss of loss etched on the young boy’s face.

Such is the face he wears now and he takes one more look at the net.

“We should burn the rackets too,” he says, and adds, “Wait here.” And Keigo, who is not used to hearing orders, obeys.

 

000

 

First is the racket in middle school: once a hard, shiny red, it has now cracked and the grip tape is worn and faded and loose. Ryoma strokes the frame, caked with dirt that had long dried out, brittle, and he lets his fingers trace over the wires, and finally, he curls his hand around the handle once more. He stares a minute longer, and then, when Keigo thinks he would not, he places the racket carefully on top of the net.

“Our match seems so long ago,” he murmurs, and Keigo does not know if this is another monologue.

But Ryoma turns to him, and although his eyes had not softened, and although his weariness has not abated, he gives Keigo a small smirk, looking for all the world haggard. “I wish you kept your hair then,” he says, and Keigo allows a small smile to crawl into his features as well, and he is sure it looks likes a grimace.

“Don’t be cruel,” he says calmly, and hands him his next racket, a black one. Keigo had never seen him play with this particular one: it was a year when their paths had not crossed, not yet. Ryoma barely glances at this one, and his grip is cursory as he flings it carelessly next to the red one.

“No love lost?”

Ryoma’s lips curve wider, but it is a haunting look, pale. “No,” he echoes, and laughs. “No, you bastard. You know that. We didn’t win that year.”

“Winning isn’t everything.”

“Isn’t it?” The curve drops and the gaze hardens. Keigo almost wishes he could retract a sentiment that is false to his own standings (after all, what is the point, if one did not win?) but now it is too late. “You don’t think so.”

“No,” Keigo agrees reluctantly, after a pause, “No, I suppose I don’t.”

“But my old man did.” Again, the quiet voice is contemplating, muttering; the tiredness comes in waves, and his voice is hushed and cracked. It carries with the wind. “Somehow, he didn’t really care about winning.”

“You sound resentful.”

This time, Ryoma flicks his eyes at him, surprised. “I guess,” he says slowly, and repeats the words. “Yeah, I guess I resented him for that.”

They don’t speak after that, not until he carried out his two others, the spares and finally, his current on, the one that would have carried Seigaku for his Nationals for his final year before university. Ryoma grips the handle tightly: for this one, he is clearly reluctant. _He does not want to do this_ , Keigo thinks, and he says, “This can only be symbolic. You don’t have to.”

“I do,” Ryoma returns, weary, “I do.”

Without a father that symbolizes too much, far too much, it is a burden that comes with shadows. Ryoma surveys the rackets and Keigo brings out the match. He looks behind. “We should bring newspapers,” he says.

“Yeah,” Ryoma says, but he doesn’t move. In the end, Keigo sighs and retrieves them from the house, thinking that crying and shouting would be better than this, whatever rite they were playing at. He wishes that Ryoma was physical sometimes, that he would seek out warmth instead of words that seep and dissolve in the air. Words for Ryoma are foolish and folly.

He hates that blank look.

 

When he returns, Ryoma is still standing in his position, and it is up to Keigo to dump the newspapers and the odd scraps of paper in the house and opens the matchbox.

But then Ryoma says, “Here,” and gives him a lighter.

Keigo gives Ryoma a look. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t,” Ryoma says, curt, “I took it out of my old man’s robes.”

Slowly, Keigo nods. He flicks the lighter and sets fire to the paper, and soon they burn but at first it is a feeble burn. He wonders if it would even catch fire, but after a brief respite from the wind, it catches the bundle of newspapers ablaze, and the first racket is devoured by the flame in small licks.

 

Until now, he did not even know that Ryoma wanted to quit tennis. But now is not the time to ask. This is a funeral, and he knows his manners well enough to not don himself as a reporter like those fools and pursue his whims. He is merely there in presence. It does not matter, he tells himself, but he cannot help but feel a small hollow hole carve inside his ribs when the first red racket is fully engulfed, and he fists his hands inside his coat.

 

“Would you miss it?” Ryoma asks, and Keigo starts.

“I suppose,” he answers, and hesitates. “Miss what?”

Ryoma shrugs. His own hands are buried inside his coat pockets as well, and he shifts his foot from side to side. “Everything,” he says carelessly, “Me playing tennis. Or you, even though you should have given it up long ago.”

“Are you calling my tennis unworthy of pursuing?” he cannot help but snipe, and for that Ryoma gives him a sharp grin.

“Obviously,” he drawls, and adds, before Keigo can open his mouth in indignation, “You’ll still have to keep it up, I guess. Tennis is a gentleman’s sport, after all.”

“I’m surprised you know that,” Keigo says, after a beat has gone, “But, naturally, those people wouldn’t know how to serve a ball for all their fortunes.”

Ryoma laughs, a small, harsh bark. “Naturally.” He looks at the flames again, and then looks back at Keigo. The smile is gone abruptly, wiped out without a trace. The same blank look shadows over him.

“I don’t how to do this,” Ryoma says, and he looks lost and Keigo feels lost looking at him. “What should I do, Keigo?”

Keigo stares at the boy who had once been a little brat and now is a taller one, who had never called him by name save for the times in sarcasm or wheedling, and who had never sounded like a child. _He is almost as tall as me now_ , Keigo observes. _He is shivering. He has just lost a father._

“Give me your hand,” he says abruptly, and although the words take Ryoma by surprise, for he did not expect such an answer, he gives his right hand up, willingly, taking out his hand from the warmth of his pocket. Keigo shakes his own hand out of his warmth, and they are both not wearing gloves. He takes the smaller hand and grasps it. It is hard and cold and it does not seem that Keigo could ever warm it. But he grips it tighter all the more, and although Ryoma grimaces, he does not wiggle free.

He cannot say to the boy, _I do not know. What should you do? What do we do at times like this? I wish I knew_. Instead, he focuses on the present, he focuses on what they do not have to do at this moment.

“You could wait here until all the reporters have gone,” he says, “I think one of them is still lurking around the gates. Horrid people.”

Ryoma finally lets out a laugh that does not sound like the echoes of hysteria. “Horrid,” he agrees, and laughs again, and Keigo thinks, looking at their hands, entwined and together, _this is still useless, flesh is useless, words are useless, and now, what is left?_

His heart thumps.

 

000

 

Yuushi asked him, When did you love the boy?

 

He forgets the content or context relevant to that particular conversation. He only knows that he had answered in a dismissive manner and later brooded over that question and the answer disturbed him far more than he liked to admit.

He had first realized that he loved the boy at the front of a blazing fire and hours after Nanjiroh’s death, when the boy was about to fall apart and Keigo had stood by so near and was unable to do anything. Thinking, helpless, _I love him_ , and thought almost instantly afterwards, _but that does not matter because that would not save him now._

 

His combination of love and helplessness. It will damn them both someday.

 


	2. encounters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wakashi meets Echizen, years later. He is a journalist and the younger boy is a translator.

000

 

This is how it starts.

It starts with a confession.

 

000

 

Atobe nods at him, unsure how to greet him. “Hiyoshi,” he says, and correct himself soon after. “Wakashi.”

He isn’t sure what to say except return back, “Atobe-san. It’s been awhile.”

There is the awkward nod again, and another. Atobe is not awkward, Wakashi thinks, or, he was never awkward. Now he is looking into an old teammate and a captain, standing side by side as equals.

Atobe gestures to the front desk. “Are you staying in the hotel?” he inquires.

He gives a small nod. “For a week,” he says, “My brother is taking a course here and…” the rest is unspoken, but Atobe nods, quick, as if he can read his trail of thoughts. Or perhaps he is merely tired. His eyes look unfocused.

“Well, then,” he says, “We should have dinner. When’s a good time?”

He opens his mouth to inform him, _well, I will be busy, well, I will be doing this and that_. In truth, he does not want to have dinner with his former captain, one whom he had spent a good six years of his torrid school life with, and who had seen him more at his worst than at his best.

He closes his mouth, though, and huffs a small sigh. “Tonight is good,” he allows.

Atobe gives him a small smirk. “It’s not that easy to fend away your elders, Hiyoshi,” he drawls, and with a flick of his fingers, he is gone, with a reservation for four people in the hotel restaurant at six.

He is relieved to know that he will not be alone with his captain, then gives a double take. He asks to see the names, and one name makes his eyes blink and consults it back again.

“Is this the right name?” he asks stupidly, and looks again.

There is another name that he had never expected to see again.

 

000

 

“Hiyo-C,” Akutagawa greets him, happy and lively, almost squeezing out of his seat, “You’re all grown up! Look, Keigo, it’s Waka-C Hiyo-C, double Cs!”

Atobe sighs and rubs his eyes. He looks like he needs more wine and the waiter steps forward helpfully. He gingerly takes a seat and gives Akutagawa a dry look. “That’s old, Akutagawa-senpai,” he says, “And very childish.”

“Jiroh!” Akutagawa immediately rebuts, and pouts. His lips are red from the wine already. “It’s not childish, it’s the name I gave you! Isn’t it neat, Ryoma-chan?” He sing-songs this to the boy next to him.

“Hm,” Echizen says.

Boy, man, he cannot really tell. What he can tell is that Echizen is not the Echizen he used to know: the tennis driven kid who would have earned the Grand Slam Echizen. This is a subdued boy-man who is playing with his spoon and not touching his bread Echizen.

“Ryoma-chan,” Akutagawa says gravely, “That’s not an answer.”

Echizen sighs and twirls his spoon around the table. “It’s very poetic,” he says dully, “Very, very innovative. Makes my ears bleed.”

“Ryoma,” Atobe says.

Echizen gives Atobe a look. It’s not a childish look that he was used to seeing: no smirk or sneer in place. It is merely a frown. “I was working,” Echizen is now saying, “On my book. These things have a deadline, you know.”

Atobe raises an eyebrow. “You don’t keep deadlines,” he says, and gestures to the bread. “Don’t pretend to be a workaholic.”

He fidgets in his seat and feels he needs an explanation, but Atobe is not there to provide one and Akutagawa is playing with his name, all happiness and no worries. In the end, he turns to Echizen. “You write?” he asks.

It must have come off as a sneer; he had not intended that, but in dealing with the matters of Echizen and past formulas is difficult. Echizen immediately narrows his eyes.

“Translate,” he says, curt, and looks down on his plate.

“Ah.” He tries to soften his voice deliberately, neutralize his tone. “What kind of books?”

Echizen shrugs. “Novels, criticism, stuff,” he mumbles. He looks desperately tired and calls the waiter for coffee.

Akutagawa does another bounce on his seat. “He’s won some translator awards too!” He informs Wakashi, looking happy as if it were him that had won them. “Some of them are really famous ones too, right, Keigo?”

“They don’t pay,” Echizen cuts in, before Atobe could affirm or denote the notion, “It’s just dallying. Stuff.” He shrugs and adds milk to his coffee.

Atobe raises an eyebrow but doesn’t comment; instead, he turns to him.

“So what are you up to nowadays, Wakashi?” he says, out of politeness or real interest, he still cannot read Atobe’s words between the lines. “Not tennis, obviously.”

The rest of the dinner is spent on talking about himself and that was strange, he reflects back later in the night, that had been strange. He had never been the one to talk in front of Atobe, who was always too ready to talk only about himself.

 

000

 

Keigo and Jiroh will later forget about this encounter because it did not mean anything: old chances, old faces, they come and go.

 

Much later, Keigo will think: but I have seen that look on Ryoma’s face long ago. Why hadn’t I seen before?

 

But that is later. This is now.

000

 

The next day, he runs into Echizen alone at the lobby. He is about to check out but his flight has been delayed.

“You write under a pseudonym,” he blurts out, before a greeting. Echizen stops and frowns. He was about to ignore Wakashi but now it seems he cannot be ignored.

“Huh,” he says.

“I mean,” Wakashi stops and frowns too but goes on, “I was searching for your name last night. It comes under a different name.”

Echizen looks confused. He is debating whether to shrug or sneer, and that combination makes for a lost look. “I didn’t know I warranted searching,” he finally manages.

Wakashi does his own half-shrug. “I was bored,” he says. “And they have free Internet here, so, why not.”

Echizen nods, uncertain. He wouldn’t know how to lead a conversation, Wakashi thinks, and seeing Echizen alone in broad daylight makes him look younger. It seems like a good excuse for Wakashi to blurt out, “Do you…do you want to get some coffee?” and he cringes inwards, thinking about how it would be awkward, how they would be awkward together, and that sounded like a terrible pick-up line.

Echizen considers him. His frown evens out and there is even a hint of a little smirk. “Only if you’re paying,” he says, and does not question the instinctive nature of Wakashi’s proposal but follows him to a nearby café and they talk. They talk but they observe more. They observe each other.

Wakashi does not know what Echizen will see in him but he knows what he sees in Echizen: someone who is not-Echizen.

“It’s not a pseudonym,” Echizen tells him, “I work for that guy. We collaborate. I’m too young to start on a new project yet.”

“They’re good,” he tells him, “I mean, the ones I’ve read. I read some of the translations by him.”

“Yeah?” Echizen looks a bit pleased, or, Wakashi imagines that he looks pleased. “Didn’t know you read stuff like that.”

“I do,” he says, “When I have time.”

Echizen shrugs and the conversation falls flat again. Wakashi starts it up.

“I didn’t know you would be translating,” he says.

Echizen huffs, and doesn’t answer immediately. He takes his time with his coffee with a slow sip. “It just happened,” he says. His eyes droop and he looks drained. “Stuff.”

“Life?”

“Yeah, that. Is this going to be an interrogation?” Echizen raises an eyebrow at him and Wakashi feels exposed. He feels himself blushing.

“No,” he says, “No. I mean. This is weird.”

“It is,” Echizen agrees dryly. “This isn’t supposed to happen.”

“I.” Wakashi gives off a delicate cough. He wonders the logic behind this. He has checked out of the hotel, his flight is not yet due, Echizen is here brimming with answers to a curiosity that he wants resolved. That logic sounds valid, but with Echizen in front of him, he is forced to admit that everything is none of his business and he does not pry into affairs that are not his. He is not Mukahi, after all, he notes grimly.

Echizen gives him a smirk though, and the smirk conveys answers. “I’m hungry,” Echizen announces, “Do you think you’re up for it?”

Without waiting for an answer, he summons the waiter. He orders food and Wakashi watches him as he tucks in bite after bite, and after awhile he ventures out, “Has Atobe-san been starving you?” just so he could get Echizen to stop eating and actually talk.

Echizen mumbles through the food at how he lost all appetite and it just seems to be coming back, how convenient for him, yeah?

“You said you did news?”Echizen says between bites. Wakashi stirs his cup of coffee and wrinkles his nose.

“Journalism, yes,” he says, “But I already said this. Yesterday.”

“I was zoning out,” Echizen says, a little too cheerfully.

Wakashi gives him a sharp look for that but elaborates. “Yes, news. Mostly reviews, though. I would say we’re in similar situations.”

“Meaning?”

Wakashi shrugs. “I’m too young to be doing serious reporting,” he says, “Not that I’m against that. I agree; I’d need more experience before I become good at it. Subversion should come after mastery.”

“Sounds very deep,” Echizen mocks. He licks his fork clean and studies Wakashi. His eyes are glassy. “But, just so we’re clear, monkey king gave me that job and you worked your way up. Different.” He looks pleased for someone who had just debased himself.

Wakashi frowns. Before he can stop himself (or approach in a more roundabout way, as was his original plan) he asks, curt, “Yes, so, why did you stop tennis?”

This could have gone better. He could have bought the younger man more food and when he was sated, asked about Seigaku, or the old members, at least, made fun of Atobe for a bit, and then breach the topic. He could have first asked about the nature of Atobe and Echizen’s relationship (which he was beginning to suspect) and where, if anywhere, Akutagawa came into all this. But in the end, that was all it mattered.

Echizen isn’t as perturbed as Wakashi feared. He shrugs. “Why didn’t you?” he says. “You were all for being Hyotei’s number one.”

“I…people from Hyotei don’t go pro,” he says, stiff. “Well. I mean, naturally.”

“Naturally,” Echizen drawls, his lips twisting, “I don’t think they go do journalism either.”

“I used to write for the school newspaper,” Wakashi counters, and frowns. Why were they coming back to him? “I liked it, so I decided to do more.”

“Heeeh.” But Echizen doesn’t offer anymore. He plays with his fork, letting it dangle between his fingertips.

Wakashi doesn’t know how to probe answers. He leans back into his seat, suddenly exhausted. He’s not willing to have another try at something he is only thinking, _it would have made a good story for an hour, and it that would have been all. Don’t work up yourself about it._

 

But he is. He is curious, like the time he had been morbidly curiously with UFOs and where they might have come from. It was a morbid mystery, and he liked morbid mysteries, and this boy, sitting across from him, with his glazed look and twitch, seemed to be a bleak mystery in the part of a tangled relationship.

Echizen looks at him and his twitch becomes a small, tired smirk. “I quit, that’s all,” he says, “Not the first time in human history.”

“You could have become a legend,” he says, “In Japan. You’d have beat off your father’s—”

He stops and looks down. The silence is heavy upon them.

“Oh,” he says, “Yes. I. I’m sorry about your loss.”

How silly of him to forget. How positively inane of him.

He hears Echizen give a sigh. “It’s been two years,” he says, sharp, “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

“I suppose it does,” he replies without looking up. “I mean, I thought the media did.”

“The fucking news would make connections to anything. But, if that explanation satisfies you, sure.”

Echizen sounds curiously detached form his own proceedings. Wakashi sees Echizen’s fingers move over the rim of his cup.

“It might explain some things,” Wakashi mumbles.

“That’s what the reporters said when I wasn’t going pro.”

“And that wasn’t the reason?”

This time, a sigh that sounds more like a laugh is heard. “Didn’t you hear me say no?”

Wakashi slowly lets his eyes surface back to the crook of Echizen’s armrest and his eyes gradually meets Echizen’s face again.

Echizen is watching him. He looks amused, but the amusement is not evil. It is merely an indulging amusement. He is indulging him, and Wakashi realizes, he would not be the first one (nor the last) to ask a question that Echizen has been carefully formulating over the last few years. The words Echizen are saying are a method and they are not real words.

He gives a small cough. “Yes,” he says. “Yes. You’re right. Let’s drop the topic, then.”

Echizen gives a small frown. “So you’re not going to ask the reason?”

“No,” Wakashi says and shakes his head for emphasis. “No. It was rude of me to badger you with it in the first place anyhow. My apologies.”

Echizen looks taken aback. His eyes narrow at him and the frown intensifies. “Huh,” he says, “I didn’t know that you could be so charming.”

He shrugs. “You’ve only seen me play tennis,” he says, “That’s not particularly a time to be practicing my mannerism.”

 Echizen watches him pick up his cup of coffee and finish it. After a moment of silence he says, “My dad’s death just came at a really convenient time. I wanted to give it all up before that.”

It is a dry, flat statement and the tone makes him sound cruel, but when Wakashi looks up, Echizen’s eyes waver.

Wakashi nods. He calls the waiter and settles the bill.

 

000

 

Before they part, Wakashi does something peculiar. Later, he would mull over it in the plane and seek out an explanation. It was Echizen’s reluctance to tell the story, and Wakashi does like a story, when there are so few and far in-between. It might have been because of his old fascination of everything having to do with Atobe Keigo. Perhaps it was just the exotic setting and an exotic boy.

 

He asks Echizen for his phone and gives him a number.

“I’m staying in London for awhile,” he says, as Echizen takes his phone back, a new contact added, his eyes obscure. “Just…just in case we might run into each other.”

Echizen studies his screen and looks up. His smile is sharp. “Digging potential murk?” he says, “Monkey king _was_ right about you—you are a Hyoteian.”

Wakashi is about to protest, but he sees the look on Echizen’s face and deems it safe to shrug and allow a small smirk of his own. “When opportunity arises,” he says, and bids his farewell.

He would think later, it was the wavering of the eyes. They made Echizen a vulnerable wreck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. farewell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He thinks now, well, pity is a far worse vice than hatred.
> 
> He pities Wakashi. He pities Keigo. But he does not pity Ryoma, not anymore.

000

 

Jiroh understands how this will end. But that does not mean he has to be brave.

 

000

 

Keigo sits him near a café. His face is withdrawn after Wakashi’s funeral. He orders a coffee, black, no sugar. Jiroh smiles and says he will have cake.

Keigo is silent. He is silent and Jiroh is silent and they have no words and everyone else has too many words. So Jiroh will pluck out the words out of everyone and open his mouth.

He speaks. “How is Ryoma?”

Keigo stirs. His fingers are pretty, Jiroh thinks, and long and white and everything else he can think of. Keigo is everything and Jiroh is everything next to him but nothing without him. He pokes his cake that arrived. It is white and full of cream and it will make him happy when Keigo will not.

“He’s fine,” Keigo says, and adds, “Living.”

“That’s good.” Jiroh smiles. Smiling is good and normal, if there is something that is normal and fine in this world, it would be him smiling and maintaining a presence of happiness. “Living is good.”

Keigo sighs. “I didn’t mean that in that context,” he says. He sounds tired and Jiroh is sick of everyone talking as if they were tired all the time. “I meant that—well. He’s okay. He’s good. Fuck.” Keigo rubs his eyes with his palms rubs and rubs. When Jiroh sees his eyes again they are red from all the rubbing. “I don’t know how to say this, Jiroh,” he says.

Jiroh shrugs. He pokes at his cake again; poke, poke, poke. The cream would not fall off. “Try,” he says, cheerful, in good cheer, with cheer. Or perhaps he is imagining it and he is talking like Keigo in all his tiredness and morbid gloom.

“Let’s not talk about Ryoma.”

“Okay,” he agrees. “But not talking about Ryoma and then talking about us is going to be hard.”

Keigo becomes silent and stirs his coffee and Jiroh is still poking at his cake.

“We can talk about us,” Keigo articulates slowly, “Without him. I mean, what I am about to say is—“

“Let me eat the cake first,” Jiroh says. Loudly. He resumes a smile and pokes at the cake again. “They have good cake here.” He divides the cream and the bread and cuts the soft sponge into little pieces and dabs the white cream in each of the pieces. There are small raspberries and strawberries hidden amongst the layers and Jiroh adds them onto the sponge as well. He makes a small pile of little pieces of cakes until everything is a small pile and a glob and looks white and pink and unappetizing as a whole.

Keigo watches the cake. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll wait.”

 

000

 

They talk. Or, they will talk. Or, Keigo will talk and Jiroh will listen. As in, Keigo will talk and Jiroh will pretend to listen but he will not really listen because he knows what Keigo will be talking about so he won’t need to listen. Or, he will listen and it will hurt but Jiroh will smile throughout it all because he’s not a complete idiot and he had expected this. And then the following conversation will end somewhere along the lines of:

 

“Take care, Keigo.”

“You too, Jiroh. Look—I’ll pay the bill, don’t bother yourself.”

 

And that will be Keigo’s last word and Jiroh will allow Keigo to pay for the ruined cake and the coffee that he did not drink and those parting words will rewind through Jiroh again and again and Jiroh will replay them as he heads back to his own bed. He will not look at Keigo again save for photos and old memories and old letters.

But this did not happen yet. Jiroh is still cutting his cake.

 

000

 

Keigo had once said, _I love you._

He had said those words so many times. But now that he reflects back on it, Keigo had said _I_ , and _love_ , and _you_. He had not said a name. He had said words that could be replaced with any name. He had said words that were universal and grandiose in its meaning. Back then he was happy with those words that formed a meaning and emotion. He was happy that he was hearing them and that he was the recipient.

Now, he mulls over them and realizes there were never any names.

He comes back to those words again.

And thinks, _but Keigo had only said those words to me_.

He thinks, _he had never said them to Ryoma._

And then again, _Oh_.

 _How very stupid I am_ , he thinks.

Ryoma had said once, _words mean nothing, not really. Not in the endgame._

Keigo had agreed and Jiroh had laughed, _you’re so pessimistic, the both of you!_

And Keigo had ruffled his hair and smiled and Ryoma had looked away.

But before that they were not looking at him but at each other.

 _Words are nothing,_ Ryoma had said.

 _I never disagreed,_ Keigo replied.

Jiroh licks a dab of his cake. He feels weary and drained and lost. But he does not know how to drop his smile.

 

000

 

Keigo will say: _I’m sorry, Jiroh. This will not work out._

Or: _Jiroh, I wish we could have worked._

Or: _Jiroh._

And pause.

He will mean: _Jiroh, I love Ryoma like I could not love you._

Ryoma had once said: words are useless because they mean nothing. They are sounds.

Jiroh is beginning to read between the lines.

 

000

 

“How is the cake?” This is the present and this is Keigo in front of him (for the last time). Jiroh takes in his brown hair and grey eyes and small mouth with the tired smile. He takes in the white face and the grey eyes and the mouth. He takes in the hair, the hands, the fragments but never the whole.

“Good.” His smile is intact because his mouth hurts and his face is numb. He pokes at his cake again and licks a smear of cream. “Sweet, good,” he chirps, “Do you want some?”

Keigo takes a clean fork and chooses one of the ruined pieces and puts a piece in his mouth. Jiroh wishes he would have divided them neater, he would have arranged them nicely if he knew that Keigo would have eaten them. Keigo never eats cake. He does not like sweet things and suddenly he is eating them. He is eating things that he does not normally eat and he chose this time to eat it when Jiroh had ruined the cake. The cake is smeared and divided and full of cream and Keigo chose the ugliest piece. It makes him furious.

The smile drops.

“You don’t like cake,” he says. “You never eat cake!” He shouts.

Keigo looks at him, surprised. Around, people glance at them and their voices drop.

But still, everyone is talking and they all have too many words and between them they have none. Or, none that matters to him.

He puts his face into his hands and presses his palms hard into his eyes, mouth, nose. They are fragments; he is a fragment; he is not a whole. 

 

000

 

He remembers: Ryoma’s eyes.

When he first looked at them he thinks, I will be able to love him.

This is the beginning, he recollects. This will be the first week he moved in, and he will see Ryoma for the first time since high school and he will think at how Ryoma looks slouched in the hallway. He had looked lost and like a child and Jiroh looked into those eyes and thought: this could work out. We might all be happy together.

Then Ryoma’s face contorted into an ugly sneer and Jiroh thought, no, it will never.

But his first words: “We’ll have fun together, won’t we, Ryoma-chan?”

Ryoma hates the nickname. Jiroh does not call him that merely to spite him. Jiroh does not hate Ryoma. He has never hated Ryoma. He had merely thought, Ryoma is such a child and has never grown up. And so he pities him, and the name is a result of that pity.

 

He thinks now, _well, pity is a far worse vice than hatred._

He pities Wakashi. He pities Keigo. But he does not pity Ryoma, not anymore.

 

000

 

“Jiroh.” That is Keigo’s voice, but with darkness he cannot see. “Jiroh. Get your hands away from you face and talk to me. Jiroh.”

Keigo does not like crying and he does not like scenes. He is not doing either, and he will never do either. But he has the right to not see the man sitting across from him and he has the right not to obey. He is tired of obeying when they do not benefit him.

“Jiroh.” There is a sigh, and the voice is further away. Keigo had leaned back into his seat again. “Please, Jiroh, don’t do this.”

Why is he here? Jiroh wonders. They know the words that they will each enact and they know the forthcoming conclusions. Jiroh will cry in his room and Keigo will not cry but go back to Ryoma. Ryoma will be desolate but he will live. Keigo will live. Jiroh too, in the end, will live.

They will all live and forget this.

He presses down on his hand, hard, before he lets go. He sighs. “I’m fine,” he says. “I’m fine. It’s just…the cake. You never eat cake.”

Keigo looks at him, distraught. “No,” he says slowly, “I suppose I don’t.”

And so we are also speaking in signs and signals, Jiroh thinks. It makes up for a tiring conversation.

“I want another,” he says.

Keigo looks at him. He doesn’t speak but when he does it is tired and resigned. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I only have cash with me today. I don’t think it’ll buy another.”

“I’ll buy this round,” Jiroh counters, and calls the waiter. He smiles again. “I can’t believe Keigo doesn’t have any money!” He is back, he is in good cheer, he is a complete fake.

Keigo’s lips twitch and his eyes are miserable. “There’s a first for everything,” he says, “I was in a rush.”

 

000

 

 This is how it ends: he has another cake, and another, and Keigo pays for three cakes and a coffee because he has his card with him after all, and Jiroh smiles until his lips hurt and in the end they do not say anything and this is how Jiroh knows that everything is over.

People talk in voices and there are words floating around but Keigo only turns away.

 _Words do not mean anything_ , Ryoma said.

In the end, that is all he understands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
